Striving for Mediocrity - Gravity/Earth - A Journal

Gravity Control
It's been an eye-opening experience. Some of the issues that people have long complained about I feel are justified and some aren't. I also think not enough emphasis is put on how good a pet Singularity really is. I'm still not a fan of the set though, and I can't see myself ever rolling another Gravity Dom.

Let's go down the list:

Crush
I didn't take this. Generally I find the ST immobilizes to be quite passable.

Lift
I didn't like this power to start with, but it grew on me and by the time of writing it's probably my preferred ranged attack power. The delayed damage still annoys the hell out of me though.

Gravity Distortion
A very middle of the road ST hold, at least in terms of animation. It's a ST hold, a Dom's bread-and-butter, so it's hard to say bad things about it, but the animation time is middling to long and the hold effect is almost imperceptible. Also, the fact that Gravity does things backwards and it's the holds in this set that do the -kb and not the immobs remains a source of angst. A favourite tactic on my Mind Dom for bosses was to Dominate-Levitate-Dominate and it took a while to break myself of the habit of trying to do it with Capella. Actually, one of the better effects of all that recharge is that I can now go Lift-GD-GD and the second GD will hit before the target has gotten up from the original knockup.

Propel
Took it. Laughed at the effects. Hated the animation time. There's only one power in this set that I hate the animation time on more. At least this one is highly replaceable, so I eventually respecced out of it.

Crushing Field
I have a love-hate relationship with AoE immobs. They do have some utility, but for me that's always been at the price of a much better power pick and generally I find that unacceptable. This is still in my build, and I still use it after every Wormhole, but I got along fine with Wormhole when I didn't have it and I question whether there is better utility in either the Leadership or Medicine pools.

Dimension Shift
Hahahhahahhahahaa. No.

Gravity Distortion Field
I'm a fan of Dominator AoE holds when backed up with Power Boost. The extra recharge doesn't hurt either and I find this power reliably up every second spawn. The bad news is that it suffers from the same issues as Gravity Distortion, but at least it's a targeted AoE rather than a PBAoE like some of the sets get.

Wormhole
This power gets a lot of discussion, from questions on what the hell it does to people praising it for its utility to criticizing it for its complexity. It is definitely fiddly to use and the animation time has got Capella killed more than once. It's not always possible to get out of line-of-sight to avoid the weird "attack at start of animation" thing and there isn't always a good wall or corner to place the location target against. It's also definitely not a great mid-spawn oh-carp power. (Note previous comment about animation time). It also comes far too late.

But all that being said, it's still a very good power that performs a unique function. I was also pleasantly surprised regarding the other often complained about issue with its AoE radius which is smaller than other AoE controls. I only rarely noticed the issue once I got some practice with the power.

Singularity
This power makes the set in my opinion, even more so than Wormhole. Having an autonomous source of control that makes relatively intelligent decisions regarding targeting and is damn close to unkillable is brilliant and far more key to set performance than I anticipated. In fact, it almost makes up for the rest of the set.

Earth Assault
After doing this set, I am of the opinion that it is a fantastic Dominator secondary set. Probably only second to Psionic Assault and on par with Fiery Assault. The SMASH trio makes it highly melee though, and I'd go so far as to say that you could go with only Stone Spears as your ranged attack and not lose much utility at all.

Going down the list again:

Stone Spears
It's got a cool animation, but its drawbacks are annoying. You have to take it, and I still use it occasionally to knock a sliver off a very sick target.

Stone Mallet
The first of the SMASH trio. This is by far the least of them too which is kind of amazing given that (for comparison) it does only a little below Mind Probe which has long been the powerhouse ST attack in Psi Assault.

Tremor
This is the longest animating PBAoE damage effect that Dominators get while also being the lowest damaging one. In my opinion this is one of the "dump stats" of the set. Even if you treat it as a control nearly three and a half seconds is a long time to wait for a control effect.

Hurl Boulder
It's ok. Long animation, relatively low damage, but it is very cool looking and the best ranged option you have.

Power Boost
This is the power that makes Gravity Control tolerable. Others can sing the praises of Power Boost; typically I would prefer a damage-buff at this point, but it's hard to argue with the results. Gravity Control needs Power Boost to be viable as it brings GDF online as a workhorse AoE control.

Heavy Mallet
The second of the SMASH trio. It's the same as the first Mallet only better!

Seismic Smash
The third of the SMASH trio. The only Dominator power that compares is Total Focus. This is a brilliant power. It has less than half of Total Focus's animation time and nearly the same damage (albeit Smashing). It also does Hold rather than Stun which means that it stacks well. I would go as far as to say that this may be the best ST damage power available to Doms.

Mud Pots
Awful. Another "dump stat".

Fissure
It's not great, but it's not complete dreck like Mud Pots. It's really the only AoE worth taking and it is useful, but it's AoE and range are tiny. I typically treat it as another melee attack.

Summary
Is this character fun? Definitely, even if part of the fun is trying to work out how to do stuff with it that other Doms might find trivial. But it also has some unique abilities, and as far as pure stacking Hold magnitude goes it's extremely formidible. Now if only there was some part of the game that required enormous stacking hold magnitude from a single source ...

What really keeps me coming back to it is the SMASH trio. Huge orange numbers and red and purple mobs just melting away.

Do I recommend a Grav/Earth Dominator?
No. Not really. The synergy of having all that stacking hold magnitude is blunted by a relatively slow ST hold and that all the damage output is highly resisted. Singularity is very good and has a myriad of uses, but I think it falls short of making up for the rest of the set. On Controllers, I can see it being far better as Propel is actually a good thing, but Dominators shouldn't see it that way.

What I do recommend are sets that synergise with Earth Assault in better ways. Sets that work well at melee range like Fire Control and Ice Control leap to mind and both can make very good use of Power Boost.

As far as recommending something that goes well with Gravity Control? Earth Assault is definitely one of your better options, but frankly, I'd recommend Storm Summoning or Trick Arrow and a move to an AT where the set just works better.

Thanks all for reading, it's been an interesting experiment and thanks for all the words of encouragement both here and in game.